Okami

Spiffy:

Iffy:

Camera can be a pain.

We've covered Capcom's amazing-looking Okami many times before, and now it's finally nearing completion. The game is out in Japan and scarfing up rave impressions from players. The English version being shown at E3 was marked as 80% complete, but seemed completely solid when played.

For those not familiar with it, Okami is a new action/adventure from Capcom's Clover Studio. The game stars a spirit wolf called Amaterasu, who's actually the earthly incarnation of an ancient god. Her goal is to restore color to the world, as it's been stolen by an evil entity. The game is rendered in a beautiful watercolor style that is based on ancient Japanese ink drawings. The lines wiggle and everything has the texture of parchment, making for an incredibly stylized appearance. As luck would have it, the gameplay is pretty cool too.

The E3 demo was limited to about 15 minutes and seemed to feature an early tutorial level from the full game. As we started, Amaterasu could only jump and perform a shoulder bash, which could break bits of scenery. A little sprite of some sort seemed to pop out from her fur every so often, offering slightly mocking bits of advice to teach us how to play. The quality of the text localization looks excellent. First up was a wall jump, which let us scale a cliff to reach a treasure chest. Inside was a spirit bone, which could be used later to restore Amaterasu's health.

Our guide directed us to look to the sky, where it became apparent that a dragon-like constellation was missing its final star. That's when the celestial brush popped up -- a magical ink brush that you can use to draw over the screen. Our guide explained that there were 13 magical strokes to learn, the first of which was Rejuvenation, which could repair many objects.

Putting a dab of ink where the star should've been completed the constellation, which turned into a dragon god who flew down for a quick conversation. Moving on, we came to a dry river, which looked beautiful in the soft moonlight. Unfortunately, it seemed to drop off before reaching the far shore. Once again, some quick swipes of the celestial brush saved the day, completing the river and allowing Amaterasu to cross.